They offered it as a challenge, but it’s also a sobering reality.

A state task force studying the economy of the Mississippi Delta has concluded that after decades of earlier studies and millions of dollars in federal and charitable funding, little has changed in the impoverished Mississippi Delta over the past few decades.

“Don’t allow this plan to cause you to scatter and run for cover,” said Rep. John Hines, a Democrat from Greenville and a task force member. But it’s hard not to be dispirited.

The group’s plan, titled “A Time of Reckoning,” cost $300,000 to draft. It calls for a better-coordinated approach, a “strategic compact” among the nonprofits, state agencies and other entities that too often battle for funds to “do good” in the 18-county area extending north from Vicksburg to Memphis. Robert Clark of Ebenezer, a former state legislator, is chairman of the group and knows the Delta and its people. Improvement has been his life’s work, starting when he was a teacher.

“Whatever has gone on in the Delta, it hasn’t helped the Delta. The condition is getting worse,” Clark said.

The picture is dismal:

• Unemployment in 2008 ranged from 10 percent to 17 percent in some counties, and the rate was over three times higher for blacks than whites.

• Almost 18 percent of the adult population has less than a 9th-grade education.

• The rate of those dying from heart disease in the Delta was 17.5 percent higher than the Mississippi average, and 31.2 percent higher than the nation as a whole in 2007.

• Seven out of 10 Mississippi counties with the highest prevalence of diabetes are located in the Delta.

• Most Delta counties have a teen pregnancy rate of about 1 in 5 teen girls becoming pregnant, a rate four or five times higher than elsewhere.

Still, the region can’t be fenced off and forgotten. Even if programs to help people help themselves have failed in that goal for generations, efforts must persist. Just as it would be wrong for a teacher to write off a child, it would be wrong for Mississippi and America to give up hope for better days in the Delta.